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With another tragedy, the media is circulating the same old gun control myths that have been refuted numerous times.   Being tired of looking up the evidence for each to correct the inaccuracies in reporting, I decided, that it would be a good idea to compile all of them in one post.  For my own reference and of course for whoever else is interested in the truth. If you have another prevalent gun control myth that you think should be included here, please message me.

Australia gun control and confiscation of 1996 has reduced the gun-related homicide rate:  It is true, Australia’s firearm homicide rate has decreased since 1996. However this is also true for the United States, all meanwhile the gun ownership rate in the United States has increased.

Firearm homicide trends were further investigated by an AMA study.  The study did find that the decline in total firearm deaths accelerated.  However, and I quote “there was also a decline in total non-firearm suicide and homicide deaths of a greater magnitude. Because of this, it is not possible to determine whether the change in firearm deaths can be attributed to the gun law reforms.”

Australia has had no mass shootings since 1996: Again, this is true, but it tells us nothing by itself.  New Zealand, Australis’s neighbor had the same trends in mass shootings before 1996. As I am writing this, since 1997 New Zealand like Australia has also not experienced any mass shootings, despite having the availability of firearms banned in Australia.

Australia gun violence revisited:  More recently gun offenses in Australia have actually soared.  “Despite Australia’s strict gun control regime, criminals are now better armed than at any time since then-Prime Minister John Howard introduced a nationwide firearm buyback scheme in response to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. Despite Australia’s strict border controls, the smuggling of high-powered military-style firearms is also a growing problem, particularly with the country’s reliance on shipping by sea cargo and the rise of the so-called “dark web.” So there you have it, folks.  Criminals can still get guns on the black market.  This should not be surprising though, since we have observed the same dynamic with drugs and alcohol.

UK handgun ban:  Resulted in a spike in the homicide rate for years until Britain increased their police force.

The Second Amendment is Obsolete and doesn’t apply today:  Many gun control advocates argue that the 2^nd amendment does not apply today because the firearms used by the founding fathers were muskets.  You may have even seen an ad on TV portraying a man rushing into office with a musket and attempting to murder his co-workers, ultimately failing.  Of course muskets have nothing to do with the 2^nd amendment.  The founding fathers were very aware of the words they used in the constitution, if they meant muskets, they would have written muskets.  Their real intention was for the citizens to have the same weaponry as their government.  In modern times, we are nowhere close to that.  The musket example is really just targeted to an ignorant audience who are not aware how advance the weaponry of that time actually was.  Below are some assault weapon examples that already existed before the constitution was written.  The most ridiculous aspect of accepting this premise, however, has to be the fact that you have to believe that the founding fathers were so stupid that they have never witnessed or anticipated any kind of technological advancement in weaponry.

Girandoni air rifle: 20 round capacity magazine with the ability to fire the entire magazine in 30 seconds. In service 1795.

Puckle Gun: An early Gatling gun patented in 1718.

Gun show loophole: This states that a person purchasing a gun at a gun show does not have to go through a background check.  This is simply not true.  There is no loophole in federal law that exempts gun show transactions. If you are legally purchasing a firearm, regardless of the location, a gun store or a gun show, it must be confirmed that you are legally allowed to buy a gun.

Private sales:  Some people may refer to private sales to show that a gun show loophole exists.  This however has nothing to do with gun shows as this type of transfer can occur anywhere.  Under federal law if you sell guns you have to be licensed, and thus perform background checks on all your sales.  If you however do not sell guns, and simply want to transfer a gun you already own to someone else that would be considered a private sale.  It is true, for this there is no federal law requiring a background check, though many states have their own laws that do require background checks.  You can only do this type of transfer within the state you reside, if you are transferring out of state,  you need to go through a licensed dealer.  Finally you still need to transfer the gun to someone allowed to own a gun.  It is illegal for you to transfer a gun through a private sale to a person that you know cannot own gun.

More guns equals more gun-related homicides:  You actually don’t hear this one too often, mainly because there is no evidence to support it, and a mass amount of evidence to the contrary. However violence policy center came out with a study comparing different states gun ownership rates and gun-related deaths.  They found a positive correlation between gun ownership and gun-related deaths.  In other words, the more guns a state had, the more gun-related deaths it had.  It is interesting they are calling this a study because I actually did the exact same thing.  I guess we can now refer to my research as a recently released study from Objectobot center for children who can’t read good. 😉  Joking aside, the only difference between mine and their graph, is that they did an independent survey of the firearm homicide rate for each state, while I took the data available at the FBI.  I found no correlation, almost exactly 0 between gun ownership rate and gun homicide rate, they found a positive correlation.  When comparing their data to the FBI’s, they simply have overinflated gun homicide rates for some states.  My graph is below.

Mass shootings only happen in the US: This is a pretty popular one. I believed this myself  before I seriously dived into researching this topic. You have seen everyone repeating this one, from Obama to your friends on Facebook. As it turns out, it is not true. Mises explains pretty extensively here how other countries count their firearm homicides completely differently than the US.  They basically under count them, or don’t count some at all, while the US is extremely thorough. The media takes advantage of this, failing to mention that the data they are reporting is not comparable.  They go even further and cherry pick data, or use convenient date ranges.  What happens if we use the same date range, count homicides the same way, and not cherry pick countries?  If we define mass public shootings as four or more people killed in public space, not in the course of committing another crime, and not involving struggles over sovereignty, the differences between US and other countries is not that significant. Whether comparing death rate or frequency of mass shootings US ranks about 11^th/12^th place. The average incident rate for the 28 EU countries is 0.0602. The US rate is 0.078 is higher than the EU rate, but US and the average for EU countries are not statistically different.  Full report can be found here.  

NRA/Pro Gun groups have offered no solutions:  I mean they have, many actually, they just have been ignored because they do not include additional gun control.  Here are some suggestions that have been put forward.

Harden soft targets by

-Give teachers options to carry

-Get rid of gun free zones, make them optional not mandatory

-Armed guards

We can also focus on mental health issues. Re-open mental facilities. Have FBI take mental health issue reports seriously.  We always hear, if you see something say something, well maybe we should also add, do something. If any private organization such as Walmart was suffering from so many mass shootings they would have changed their security protocols a long time ago.  This is one of the problems with this debate, some people on the left are fixated with gun control and are unwilling to make any other changes.

2nd amendment and militia was added to bill of rights to preserve slavery:  It was only a matter of time till the 2nd amendment was going to be called racist.  Anything someone doesn’t like ends up either racist or Hitler.  In this case it can’t be Hitler because Hitler confiscated guns, so racist then right?  This myth is debunked in detail here.  To summarize, the reasoning and the intention of the 2nd amendment was not to preserve slavery.  Guns and militia in the south were used to to enforce slavery, that is true.  Guns were used everywhere around the world to enforce slavery, and those places did not have the 2nd amendment.  It wasn’t only militia that used guns to enforce slavery.  In the south, slavery was also enforced at the state and federal level by law enforcement.